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"The desire of Muslims to build a house of worship means they want to feel at home and live in harmony," said Alboga. |
PARIS — Though Islam is the continent's second religion, Muslims across Europe are facing campaigns from far-right groups and some church leaders to have stately mosques.
"The desire of Muslims to build a house of worship means they want to feel at home and live in harmony with their religion in a society they have accepted as theirs," German Muslim leader Bekir Alboga told Reuters on Monday, August 6.
Muslims across Europe, who have long prayed in garages and old factories, are aspiring to have grand mosques.
In Germany, a plan by the Turkish Islamic Union (DITIB) to build a grand mosque in Cologne has met opposition on claims that it would be too big for a city housing one of the most imposing Gothic cathedrals in the Christian world.
Leading the anti-mosque campaign is Pro Cologne, a far-right organization which has held five seats in Cologne's city council since 2004.
A mosque project in Pankow, an eastern Berlin area, sparked violent clashes with neo-Nazi groups with a truck being torched at the construction site.
A local council voted against a third in Munich.
Germany is home to some 3.2 million Muslims, Europe's second-biggest Muslim population after France.
Europe-wide
In London, a petition against a grand mosque next to the 2012 London Olympics site was posted on Prime Minister Gordon Brown's Web site.
Critics of the London mosque, led by London Borough of Newham Councillor Allan Craig, an MP for the Christian Peoples Alliancea, described the planned mosque as the "the biggest symbol so far of the Islamic colonisation of England."
In France, which is home to Europe's largest Muslim minority of about five million, a far-right political party, the National Republican Movement (MNR), won two court cases this year against giving pieces of land at low prices to Muslims to build two mosques in suburbs of Montreuil and in Marseille, both having a sizable Muslim minority.
Most Marseille Muslims now pray in neighbourhood mosques too small for their congregations.
In Switzerland, two right-wing parties have launched a petition for a referendum to ban minarets on mosques there.
Italy's anti-immigration Northern League called last month for all mosques there to be closed for security checks.
In December 2006, protesters left a severed pig's head outside a mosque being built in the Italian town of Colle di Val d'Elsa.
In Greece, Muslims only got their first purpose-built mosque in Athens in June. Plans for a larger one are still on hold.
Faulting state statistics about the growing number of mosques, Muslims in the Spanish autonomous province of Catalonia have called repeatedly for a grand mosque to meet the needs of the sizable minority instead of the dozens of prayer rooms and vaults that burst at the seams with worshippers.
No sooner had Muslims in the Catalonian city of Barcelona started raising funds for the much-hoped place of worship mosque than the council reneged on its promise, arguing that the issue was not a priority.
Far-right groups also proposed this year to ban minarets in Switzerland.
Islamization
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| "I have a queasy feeling (about mosques)," Geraman Catholic Cardinal Joachim Meisner said. |
Critics claim mosques are signs of the "Islamization" of Europe.
"I have a queasy feeling," Cologne Catholic Cardinal Joachim Meisner told Reuters.
"A mosque would give the city a different panorama. Given our history, there is a shock that Muslim immigration has brought a cultural rupture in our German and European culture."
Riem Spielhaus, an expert on Islam in Europe at Berlin's Humboldt University, argued that mosque construction is a controversial issue because houses of worship in general have a high symbolic value in Europe, where the cathedral or church is usually the center of town.
"A mosque symbolically retraces the changes that have been made in society," she said.
"It reopens the debate on whether these changes are good, whether Muslims should live here, even whether Islam is a good religion."
Spielhaus said opposition to mosques is also related to other issues irrelevant to the house of worship itself like Islam as a religion and security threats.
Last month, the private secretary of Pope Benedict XVI of the Vatican gave voice to a spiraling Islamophobia in the continent warning of the "Islamization of Europe" and urging defense of Europe's "Christian roots."
Rights
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| "Everyone has a right to a significant house of worship," Marseille Mayor Jean-Claude Gaudin said. |
Despite opposition from right-wingers and come church leaders, mosque plans are usually backed by city officials and mayors, who see them as pivotal to help Muslims integrate into European societies.
Former London mayor Ken Livingstone was one of the staunchest supporters of constructing grand mosques for Muslims.
He rallied behind the plan for a grand mosque near the Olympics site, defending it as a symbol of communal harmony.
The mayor of the Italian town of Colle di Val d'Elsa, Paolo Brogioni, has also defended Muslim plans for a mosque.
"The Muslims are just as much residents of the town as any other," ha had said.
The Cologne mosque is equally supported by all political parties, trade unions, and associations.
Mayor Jean-Claude Gaudin of Marseille wants a "cathedral mosque" built after decades of debate.
"Everyone has a right to a significant house of worship."
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